Mark Memmott

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/ NPR

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.

As the NPR Ethics Handbook states, the Standards & Practices editor is "charged with cultivating an ethical culture throughout our news operation. This means he or she coordinates regular training and discussion on how we apply our principles and monitors our decision-making practices to ensure we're living up to our standards."

Before becoming Standards & Practices editor, Memmott was one of the hosts of NPR's "The Two-Way" news blog, which he helped to launch when he came to NPR in 2009. It focuses on breaking news, analysis, and the most compelling stories being reported by NPR News and other news media.

Prior to joining NPR, Memmott worked for nearly 25 years as a reporter and editor at USA Today. He focused on a range of coverage from politics, foreign affairs, economics, and the media. He reported from places across the United States and the world, including half a dozen trips to Afghanistan in 2002-2003.

During his time at USA Today, Memmott, helped launch and lead three USAToday.com news blogs: "On Deadline," "The Oval" and "On Politics," the site's 2008 presidential campaign blog.

MLB.com and other news sites are reporting that Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera is getting an eight-year contract extension from the team that means he's guaranteed to earn $292 million over the next 10 years if he keeps playing.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., confirmed Friday that he will not seek re-election in November and is going to host a talk show on the Cumulus radio network starting next year.

Officials expect to release more information later today about the death toll from last weekend's massive mudslide in Oso, Wash., and they're warning that the news is going to be grim.

"We understand there has been confusion over the reported number of fatalities," Snohomish County District 21 Fire Chief Travis Hots said Thursday. "The sadness here is that we know this number will only increase."

On their first day of searching a new area of the Southern Indian Ocean for any sign of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, "five aircraft spotted multiple objects of various colors," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said Friday.

When emergency personnel got to the scene of Saturday's mudslide near Oso, Wash., they kept people away. Much of a mountain had torn off, roared across the Stillaguamish River, and destroyed about 50 homes and properties.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's "account of these events rings true" and he has "conducted himself at every turn as someone who has nothing to hide," according to an investigation — done at the request of the governor's office — of the George Washington Bridge scandal.

Following up on his acknowledgement in January that it's problematic to have the National Security Agency collecting and storing massive amounts of information about individuals' phone calls, President Obama announced Thursday that he has decided "the data should remain at the telephone companies."

Obama, who has seen his approval numbers decline since he took office in 2009, met for about 50 minutes with the pope, who has become one of the world's most popular leaders since becoming leader of the Roman Catholic Church a year ago.

Honolulu police officials and key legislators in Hawaii now agree that a state law needs to be changed so that undercover police officers will be breaking the law if they have sexual relations with prostitutes.

Saying again that Russia's annexation of Crimea and insertion of military forces there violate international law and the sovereignty of Ukraine, President Obama declared Wednesday that while the U.S. and European union stand united, "Russia stands alone" on the world stage because of its actions.

The more than $40 million he allowed to be spent on renovations at his residence and allegations that he lied about some of his other lavish spending have now officially cost the "bishop of bling" his job.

The Vatican announced Wednesday that it has accepted the resignation of Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, who had been the bishop of Limburg, Germany. He will be assigned other duties.

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Weary searchers resumed their dangerous work Wednesday near Oso, Wash., where it's thought at least 25 people — and possibly many more — died when a massive mudslide buried dozens of homes and businesses on Saturday.

Headlines and news outlets' updates helped tell the story as the day began:

This post has been updated with word that the aerial search is over for today.

Images taken on Sunday by a French satellite show 122 "potential objects" in the area of the southern Indian Ocean that searchers are now combing for any sign of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysia's acting transport minister said Wednesday.

Hoping it will be "a dignified and reverential setting," the soon-to-be-opened National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City says approximately 8,000 unidentified remains of those who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks in Manhattan are returning "to the sacred ground of the World Trade Center site."

The U.S. is sending 150 Air Force special operations personnel to central Africa this week — more than doubling the number of American troops on the ground who are assisting in the search for infamous Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, The Washington Post reports.

Saying that it wants "to allow a more reasoned consideration of the motion to stay," the U.S. Appeals Court for the Sixth Circuit on Saturday effectively hit the pause button on same-sex marriages in Michigan.

Friday, as we reported, a federal judge struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriages.

But late Saturday afternoon, the appeals court weighed in. It said the lower court's decision "is temporarily stayed until Wednesday."

The National Security Agency has in recent years "pried its way into the servers" of Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company that the spy agency has long suspected could work with the Chinese military to steal secrets from American firms and the U.S. government, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Russia's grip on Crimea was further solidified Saturday when its forces took complete control of a Ukrainian Air Force base in the town of Belbek, NPR's Gregory Warner and Reuters report.

The landing field and other key sections of the air base had been taken over by Russian forces previously. The section handed over today was where Ukrainian soldiers and their families lived, Gregory reports.